A New Virtual Bearing Fruit

The girls were visiting Austin over the weekend, so I saved a special cache for a Saturday morning jaunt. We popped over to Pease Park, one of the city’s downtown parks, to take in a new art exhibit, a recently installed troll sculpture made by artist and activist Thomas Dambo. My blasé daughters found it interesting but were not blown away by it (though a few jokes were made about the statue’s “butt crack”). They determined it was one of the most sculptures in town. But that was secondary to our purposes. What drew us (which technically means me because I’m the one driving) was the Virtual placed at the location by friend of the blog Buckandi. We followed the directions and included a photo, and Robert was your mother’s brother! A cache for the day was claimed!

I’ve been looking forward to the recently given Virtuals to start dropping around here. I didn’t earn one; I only placed one non-Event cache last year, and it didn’t get many favorites. Many people I know in the area did earn one, so I’ve been wanting to see where they were going to take me. The troll was only the third one that I remember seeing. The first was Carrot Killer‘s D5/T5 at Goodwater Loop. I picked up another during the Leap Day festivities. I don’t know exactly how many of them were awarded, but only eleven are currently published in Texas, and more need to show up here soon!

I’ve spoken to people who barely consider them caches, but they fill an important niche in the caching ecology, so to speak. There are a number of places where physical containers range from impractical to impossible. Heck, strange containers in places like DC would probably be quickly swept up by federal officers of three-letter agencies. Non-physical cache types (Virtuals in urban spaces and EarthCaches in natural locations) offer an option in places not suited for other types. Of course, I understand why having them too available is not a good idea. I would have totally placed half a dozen Virtuals by now if I could have, so I have no doubt that we’d be swimming in them if that were the case. But having more of them around in dribs and drabs is nice. I want to see what new places they’re going to take me. I just have to wait for my friends to get off their butt cracks and place them!

Hurry up, y’all! I’m waiting!

_{P.S. There is no April fool here! April fools!}